Home Page Forums MAME MAME TMS-09xx/1xxx thread (was New Dumps)

Sky-Writer is a strange invention. In 1990th(?) there was a digital clock with a fast swinging part that worked like this.

I have a spinning top toy that displays text on such an LED row inside a transparent plastic top. It apparently uses the Earth magnetic field sensor to synchronize text output with its rotation. (Holding a magnet nearby compresses the text width and shows it twice etc.)

A predecessor of that top only displays random varying stripe ornament patterns while playing melodies. By a centrifugal force switch contact it turns off when it stops spinning. Stupid is that the COB chip contains much more melodies (2-note polyphonic squarewave?) than the spinning time (it repeats only after 15 minutes or such) and spinning the top always starts with the first melody so they never get played completely unless the contact is shorted. I also have some such tops without sound. The button cells are clamped to the PCB in a way that they can be barely replaced and so tend to leak and ruin it.

I also remember small electric fans with such LED effects. One was infamous to destroy USB ports (mentioned in a computer magazine?) by outputting nasty voltage spikes from its motor coils back into the connected PC.

Shhhhh, no one must know about my acting alter-ego!!!

One thing they don't mention about Sky Writer, is the almost guaranteed wrist injury you'll get trying to swing the thing back and forth... Pick up a tennis racket and try to make that movement. It starts to hurt pretty quickly...
I think I played around with the one I had for about 20 minutes.

Probably this thing:


I have one of these:


It's about 16 inches in diameter, and came with a remote so you could change the clock face to many different styles... Used to have it hanging in my office back in 2005 or so. I think it came out in 1998ish.
I saw the company that made it at CES in year, and they had a 4-foot diameter one on display in their booth... (Not for sale though, damn...)
Over the years, smaller USB powered ones have popped up from various companies... Some spin (like the fan you mention), or the swing back-and-forth design like Sky Writer, but without the need to fracture your wrist...
You can also get things like this for your bicycle wheels that will make designs and even images appear in your wheels while you ride...

Sky Writer is kind of the opposite of the Adventure Vision- Instead of spinning a mirror, you have to shake the LEDs back and forth... Interesting the ideas people come up with to use a single row of LEDs to make pictures...
I wonder if this was the first of this kind of technology...?

Konami TMNT2, subtitled Splinter Speaks, except that Splinter isn't in it. Maybe he's the narrator for some of the voice clips? ;p
This one was sent to Sean by Mr. Do, and hal3000 improved the LCD scan.



Sean wasn't able to dump the ADPCM chip. Samples are here:
https://tsk-tsk.net/net/samples/mame/

Unit artwork:



Konami LCD Artwork

Sean decapped/dumped Konami Star Trek 25th Anniversary and Top Gun Second Mission, both of them have voice samples like TMNT2.

Unit artwork:



Konami LCD Artwork

And Bandai U-Boat, it has the same MCU type as Tsukuda Dracula.